Elections do not solely determine the course of a country's development. But as a periodic rite of passage in democratic systems, they offer opportunities for the reaffirmation of political values, for renewal, and for reform.

With the advent of 2010, a year marked for presidential elections, three questions loomed over the Philippines: Will elections take place? Will the new president emerge with a credible mandate? Will the winner be able to govern effectively? To render judgment on the third question would be premature. Hindsight allows us to answer the first two questions.

National elections did take place as scheduled on 10 May 2010. In a field of nine candidates, the Liberal Party standard-bearer, Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” Aquino III, captured 42 per cent of the votes, the largest margin of victory in the era of the multiparty system; Jose Marcelo (Joseph “Erap”) Ejercito Estrada, in 1998, won 40 per cent of the votes. On 30 June 2010, the Philippines witnessed the peaceful transfer of presidential power from Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to Noynoy Aquino, the only son and the oldest among the five children of Benigno “Ninoy” S. Aquino Jr. and Corazon “Cory” Cojuangco Aquino.

Few would have predicted in January Aquino's decisive triumph, and many even entertained a “No-El” (No Elections) scenario. Though sceptics were proven wrong, their fears were firmly grounded; these were anchored on Arroyo's own fears that, like Estrada, the predecessor she helped unseat, she herself would have to face prosecution for abuses committed while president, once she lost the immunity conferred by the office.

The inauguration of a new president on 30 June 2010 cleanly cuts the year into two halves: the last six months of the Arroyo administration and the first six months of the six-year mandate given to President Noynoy, or PNoy, his preferred designation, which identified himself with the masses — Pinoy being the slang term for Filipinos. But the dominant political thread running through the year was Arroyo's diligent pursuit of self-preservation. Her strategy was opportunistic and multi-pronged: aborting elections, if possible, or manipulating the results, while also erecting the barriers that would protect her from prosecution in the post-election period.